


The Shepherdsville Witch

by thebaseofallmetaphysics



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gothic, Original Fiction, Southern Gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28442745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebaseofallmetaphysics/pseuds/thebaseofallmetaphysics
Summary: Charley Barrow’s mother was not a witch.
Kudos: 2





	The Shepherdsville Witch

Charley Barrow’s mother was not a witch.  
She most certainly wasn’t, despite what those awful kids in his neighborhood would have you believe. She was a normal woman, a devout Methodist, who went to the morning service every Sunday and the evening service every Wednesday. Hadn’t missed a sermon in 30 years, that’s what she always told people. She even knew the preacher on a first-name basis and shook his hand whenever she saw him. Witches, Charley always spat back at his mother’s offenders, don’t worship the good Lord our God and make friends in their church.  
When Jonathon Chapman, the little fat boy from up the street, had gone missing the week prior, rumors of the Witch of Shepherdsville started to spread all the way across Lake Sinclair into neighboring towns. The story—or at least, the most common version of the story—went that Charley’s mother stole Jonathon away while he was jumping rope in the front yard one afternoon. She stuffed him in a sack, then took him home and locked him in the attic. What happened up there no one could say for sure, but some of the kids said she was using him for a potion to fix all the wrinkles on her witchy old face. Every retelling of the story ended with a punchline about how it obviously wasn’t working.  
Charley worked hard to dispel the rumors of his mother’s black magic, but it wasn’t for the good of her reputation. Rather, it was embarrassment at the idea of people thinking he was the son of someone so awful.  
In fact, were he being perfectly honest, he supposed his mother did look a bit like a wicked witch, acted rather like one, too. Her hair was thin and limp and sometimes she abandoned her usual brassy lightened blonde in favor of a dye that made her head the same red as the tomatoes that came from his best friend Sam’s garden. She’d take her hair out of her curlers and walk around with it looking like tightly coiled Christmas bows stacked up a foot high. All the neighborhood kids swore it was about the ugliest thing they ever saw. Charley agreed with them but never said it out loud.  
He lived alone with his mother—no siblings and no father to speak of either. She told him his father abandoned the family when Charley was a toddler and refused to ever say more to him about it than that. He vaguely remembered his father, remembered being picked up and put on the swings by him at the church playground. He missed him terribly—at least, he missed the idea of him. Even if he felt silly for missing someone he hardly knew, it plagued him all the same. He wished he could recall more than foggy memories. Most of all, he wished he knew why his father left their family behind, but any questions he asked his mother were answered with a tight-lipped silence or a sharp insult to shut him up. It hurt like hell, but his mother insisted that Charley’s father was a terrible man, and he believed her because she was all he had and all he really knew.  
Often in the evenings his mother would hold a magazine between her sun-spotted fingers and long red nails, making a point to hold it loosely and far away from herself like it was some hideously rotted carcass that she ought not be touching. She’d look disapprovingly down at it, her face tilted upward to keep her cat-eye glasses balanced on the very tip of her nose. “I swear,” she’d mumble with a click of the tongue, “if Christ came back to Earth tomorrow, he’d think he done made a wrong turn and ended up in Hell.”  
She bought each and every latest issue of the tabloids the minute the general store stocked them. It made no sense to Charley why she kept up buying them on account of how she always said she hated them so damn much, but he’d learned to bite his tongue. Disagreeing with her wasn’t worth the slap in the face, whether it was the back side of her hand or her acidic words that dealt it.  
On this particular afternoon, Charley was walking to Sam’s house after school. She’d invited him over to talk about the secret club she was putting together. He humored the invitation because Sam had a big treehouse and no cats, which was refreshing from the three of his mother’s he had to deal with. Sam was a good friend to him, even if his mother disagreed. She didn’t like Sam or her family and said they seemed to her like a bunch of communist sympathizers. They suffered from “a liberal mind.” Whatever on earth that meant. But today Sam promised him chocolate chip cookies if he helped her make up rules for her club, and he couldn’t pass the offer up.  
As Charley turned up to Sam’s house, he saw her sitting in the yard waiting for him. She threw him a theatrical wave and a bellowed “I’m over here!”  
Their greeting was brief, and it was only a moment before Sam dragged Charley into her backyard, straight to the treehouse. She wasn’t one to waste valuable business time on niceties.  
After scrambling up the treehouse ladder, Sam stood in the middle of the room triumphantly, her hands on her hips and her chest heaving from the effort of the climb. “Well? You like it?” She grinned, showing off the gap between her two front teeth. “I redecorated since you been up here last.”  
Charley surveyed the room. There was much to take in, the most important thing being the plate of cookies sat on a table. Aside from that, the furniture consisted mostly of foldable metal chairs and a shaky-looking table off to the side. There were drawings, or rather, scribbles of random colors, on the walls that Sam had drawn and hung an attempt to look like posters or art pieces. Charley didn’t know a damn thing about decorating, so he just nodded and pretended he knew it looked good. “Yeah, Sammy. Perfect place for your club, I think.”  
Sam screwed her mouth up sideways when Charley said that. “Thanks. But—well, you— y’know, I didn’t really ask you to come over here for the club.” Her brows furrowed up a little bit, followed by a shrug and fidgety hands. “I can make up the rules myself. I don’t need help with all that.”  
“Alright, well…what’d you need me for, then?” Charley sat down cross-legged on an ugly pink pillow on the floor. He noticed a bunch of books stacked up next to him. Some of them were about the grace of God and some were about growing up to be a young lady with class. He thought those ones were funny because Sam was just about the least ladylike person in the whole wide world. They seemed like the type of books Charley’s mother would’ve bought him if he were a girl.  
The cogs in Sam’s head turned for a minute as she stood there and chewed on her lip. The only sound either of them could hear was the echoey bark of the neighbor's dog next door.  
She opened her mouth and drew in a loud inhale before saying, “Charley, your momma ain’t really a evil woman, is she? A witch?”  
“Oh, for the love of—that’s what this is about? Sam, you can’t tell me you really believe that shit, do you?” Charley rarely cursed, so saying the s-word felt like a bee sting on his tongue. Sam was 12, a whole year older than him, and even she believed the stupid rumors. He felt sick to his stomach.  
“Don’t get huffy at me! It’s just… that’s what people are sayin’. And your momma’s always been a little bit…well…y’know. I can’t even come over to your house no more on account of she don’t like me. I just wanted to make sure.”  
Charley clicked his tongue against his teeth and slumped backwards against the wooden plank wall behind him in frustration. “There ain’t such a thing as witches, Sammy. And even if there was, my momma ain’t one of them.”  
“Alright, alright,” she said. She grabbed the plate of cookies and handed Charley one in a frantic effort to make up for casually accusing his mother of witchcraft. “Sorry I asked.”  
Charley took two cookies off the plate and ignored her apology. “So, everyone’s still talkin’ about the witch thing? Kids are still tellin’ people that?”  
Sam nodded and sat down across from Charley with both legs stretched out in front of her. “I reckon it was some kid from the elementary school what started it. Now everyone is convinced your momma stole Jonathon.”  
Charley’s only response was a deep sigh into his first bite of cookie. He didn’t even blame the kids for thinking it was true. He was just sick of the whispers and the looks at school. He was sick of people asking him if it was true, and even more, he was sick of people assuming it was true without question. It looked bad on him. People kept calling him the son of the witch lady on top of the hard time he already had making friends anyway.  
“I hate it,” he said after a moment’s contemplation. “I keep telling people it’s not true what they’re sayin’, but I don’t think anybody even believes me.”  
“I believe you,” Sam said. “Honest, I do.” She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand before her eyes widened with a realization.  
“But wait a second.” She tapped her fingertips on her cheek. “Maybe we could convince people it’s not true if we had some kinda proof? Like how detectives do?”  
“What sorta proof am I supposed to show people for that? I don’t have anything.”  
“Well, everyone thinks ol’ Jon is in your attic, right?”  
“Right.”  
“Then it’s easy! We just go up in the attic, take some pictures. Prove to everybody there’s nothin’ up there. I’ll help you.” She clapped her hands together and beamed smiling like she’d just thought up an idea worthy of the Nobel prize.  
For a moment, Charley appreciated her cleverness and even thought the idea wasn’t half bad. But reality hit him before he could get wrapped up in it.  
Charley wasn’t allowed in the attic. It was one of his mother’s strictest rules. In fact, he couldn’t even remember if he’d ever been up there before in his life. The only reason why he knew of was that his mother kept family photos and old files from the divorce up there. She didn’t want him seeing any of that, insisting he didn’t need to know anything about a man who was just a sorry, good-for-nothing bastard anyway.  
His heart sank at the thought of his father. “Naw, I can’t…do that, Sam. I ain’t allowed up in the attic.”  
Sam scoffed, not seeming the slightest phased or disheartened by this new obstacle. “So? We’ll go up when your momma’s asleep. I never said she’s got to know about it. I can borrow my daddy’s camera. He won’t mind.”  
“I don’t know. It seems like a bad idea. I don’t wanna get caught is all,” Charley said. He picked at a scab on his knee to distract himself from the building stress.  
“We won’t get caught,” Sam insisted. “You said she likes to take naps in the afternoons, right? It’s still early. She’ll be asleep soon. That’s when we’ll go.” She jumped to her feet, her dirty saddle shoes scuffing against the floor from how forcefully she stood up.  
She grabbed Charley’s wrist and pulled him up to stand with her. “Let’s go talk details an’ get this show on the road.”  
The whole time Sam drew out a plot for their scheme—literally drew it out, map and all—Charley hardly spoke except when he had to. He knew Sam wouldn’t take no for an answer when she was dead set on something like this. His stomach was churning from nerves, but he figured he had no other chance at killing off the rumors. They discussed details, and then Charley went back home to wait for his mother to take her daily five o’clock-sharp nap. After Charley made it home and ensured his mother was asleep, Sam would come over then with the camera, and they’d sneak up the steps and take as many pictures of the attic as they could, some with the two of them in the photos as proof they were the ones who took them. Sam swore up and down and sideways it was foolproof. Charley tried his best to believe her.  
He walked home with his satchel of books slung onto one shoulder. He was so preoccupied that he almost got hit by a car while crossing the road. He didn’t even notice it until the driver honked and shouted more than a couple words of profanity at him. But there was no space in his mind to worry about the present. His thoughts now stretched beyond the fear of getting caught and into dread for what was in the attic. He had no idea what to expect there. Family secrets? Hidden treasure? Something sinister?  
Charley didn’t even remember any of his walk home when he finally arrived there. Reality only knocked on his mind again when he reached his front door and touched the old brass knob.  
The house greeted Charley with a heavy silence when he walked in onto the cold tile floor. The smell of cigarettes in the front parlor was stale, so he could tell his mother hadn’t been up to the entry of the house in a while. One of her cats ran down the stairs to chirp at him and rub its whole body against his legs. He ignored it.  
The floorboards creaked as he tip-toed through the house. It was a little bit after five, so his first order of business was making sure his mother was actually asleep and that he didn’t have to tell Sam to abort the plan when she arrived. She usually slept in the den, so he walked back to check there first. He peeped his head through the cracked door to the room and looked around. The television set was on, playing a news broadcast at low volume about how it looked like Adlai Stevenson was coming up short in the polls.  
Leaning in further through the door frame, Charley caught sight of the sofa. There his mother was, lying down like a dead lady fresh in her own coffin. She had a green face mask smeared on her skin, and he could tell that her hair, wrapped up in her curlers, was freshly dyed again. She had a carroty orange bandana tied around her head with a knot in front. With those colors he thought to himself her head looked like some kind of horrendous vegetable salad.  
But the important thing was she was asleep. Now, he thought, he just had to wait for Sam to show up so they could continue with their scheme. Maybe it wasn’t a scheme. He didn’t like the way that word made their plan sound like something bad. Sure, he was going against his mother’s wishes, but he tried to justify it by thinking it was for the good of everyone that he did this, even the good of his mother herself. He convinced himself she would be so grateful if she only knew.  
Sam was right on time. Thankfully, her knock on the door was a quiet and dull rap as opposed to the purposefully loud fist bangs she usually used to announce her arrival anywhere. Charley let her in the front door, and she walked in grinning and clutching the camera to her chest. He tried to match her enthusiasm, but she could tell right away his smile was forced.  
“Quit your worryin’, will you?” Sam whisper-hissed at him. “We’re going to be fine.”  
Discussing their steps on what to do if they heard his mother come up the stairs was the final thing to do. The plan went that if they heard even just one footstep, they’d both hide behind something until his mother decided she was just hearing things and went back downstairs. Charley didn’t think it sounded particularly solid at all, but it was the only shot they had.  
After that, they headed toward the attic together, each making an effort to keep their steps light and their breathing silent.  
“Are you ready?” Sam whispered with a poke at Charley’s arm.  
He wasn’t even a little bit ready, but he nodded all the same. They followed each other up the stairs and Sam took the initiative of twisting the knob and pushing the door open. It scraped against the floor with a dreadful noise like a car engine that wouldn’t start up. Charley felt the noise rush up his spine, a cold shock of electricity. He and Sam froze in place.  
They were both entirely still for a few moments, desperately anxious to hear a noise from downstairs. Nothing came. Charley finally took a breath and they continued into the attic.  
“Sure is dusty up here,” Sam mumbled. She still seemed to be completely lacking any sense of nervousness. He couldn’t decide if it made him feel better or worse. “You’re shakin’,” she said to him. “Quit it.”  
Charley looked around. The attic was full of stuff. Boxes lined the walls, some full of holiday decorations his mother never put up, some full of tapes and photo albums that he could only assume were full of his family.  
He couldn’t decide what to think.  
He was there, in the attic, this mysterious place he’d always been barred off from. He was standing in it, breathing in its musty old air.  
“Sam,” he breathed, “Can you take the pictures, please? So we can get out of here?”  
She nodded and pointed her camera at an angle that captured most of the room in its frame. The shutter snapped, and Charley waited for her to take another one. That, however, didn’t happen.  
“I want to look around for a second,” she said, lowering the camera and taking a few steps forward. Charley wanted to tell her to stop screwing around and take more pictures, but he was curious too, if he was being honest with himself. He half wanted to see what Sam would find since he was too chicken to look around himself.  
“I think this is all your baby clothes.” She kneeled down to start sorting through a box that was sat on the floor. “Toys, too.”  
“Here’s somethin’,” she said with a hearty laugh. “It’s a cookbook! Says ‘Recipes’ on the front. You suppose she’s got a recipe in here for cookin’ up Jonathon Chapman? I’m gonna look through it.”  
Charley didn’t have it in him to tell Sam to stop anymore. His mother was asleep, and her naps usually lasted forever. They’d be fine so long as they didn’t yell. He wanted to know what was in this old family cookbook even more than she did, and seeing her so brave made his fear dwindle under his curiosity.  
“Hey, isn’t your momma’s name Marian?” Sam looked back at Charley, her frizzy blonde hair swinging over her shoulder as she did. He answered yes. “Get over here,” she said. “You oughta see this.”  
“What is it?”  
“I think it’s a letter or somethin’. Lookit.” She pointed at a page in the cookbook. “Read that,” she urged.  
Charley studied the page in question, noticing it wasn’t a recipe at all. It was definitely a letter. 

Dear Marian  
Im writing again because its Christmas and I want to know if I can see Charley.  
If you still wont let me see him, Im at least going to send a present and I hope you give it to him. I dont know if youre ignoring these letters or if you moved. Ive seen you take the easy way out on many things Marian but please dont do it on this. Im willing to forgive you for everything but I dont want to feel like a fool for it.  
You know I would do anything to see our son again. Im going to keep trying. At least tell him I miss him.  
—Chuck

Charley couldn’t even take a second to think about processing what on earth he had just read before Sam spoke up again.  
“Look, it’s a present or somethin’,” she said, pulling a small gift out of the box she’d been rooting around in. It was wrapped in light blue paper with a little green bow on the top. It looked messy, like it was done by someone who didn’t know a thing about wrapping presents but put all their effort into it nonetheless. “‘To Charley,’” Sam read off the gift tag, “‘From Papa.’”  
Charley’s heart felt heavy in an instant. “Gimme that.” He snatched it from her with sweaty palms and ripped at the paper.  
Pressure built in his throat as he examined the gift. It was a small metal model plane. A US P-51 Mustang—exactly the one he’d wanted for Christmas a few years ago. His hands trembled as he cradled the little toy in his hands. This was from his father. His father wanted to see him.  
Charley’s tears fell hot on his cheeks once he finally couldn’t hold them back any longer. Every word from the letter played back and forth in his mind, and he cried harder the more he thought about what all he’d just learned. He flipped through the book frantically, finding pages and pages of other letters that were just like the first.  
His father had been trying to see him for all this time. Charley always believed his mother’s story and wondered helplessly why his father had left, but now within a few minutes he found out it was all a lie. He felt stuck in a bad dream now as this dark, smelly attic became the place where his whole life came crashing down on his shoulders.  
Sam patted his back, awkwardly trying to comfort him. She cleared her throat. “I don’t quite know what’s happenin’ right now, but I, um, I sure am sorry. I-I’ll get back to takin’ them pictures for us, how’s that sound?” She stood up and walked to the other room in preparation to take more photos.  
Charley didn’t answer. He could hardly hear her. All he was aware of was the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. Every ounce of blood in his body rushed to his face, and every part of him except for his cheeks felt cold.  
He was buried so deep in his confusion to that he didn’t pay attention to his surroundings enough to hear Sam hissing his name at him and warning him to look up.  
The door into the attic was creaking open again then with the same terrible, grating sound from before. It sobered Charley up immediately.  
When he whipped his face around to look, a tall updo of red hair was the first thing he saw.  
Charley tried to stand up from where he was sitting on his calves, desperately attempting to jump to his feet and make a run for it. But he stumbled and fell right back down. He heard Sam whimper in terror from the back corner of the room.  
His mother was in the doorframe staring at them. She said nothing, only stood still with a blank white face and an aura of static electricity around her as she stared Charley right in the face.  
Shuffling forward in her house slippers, she approached Charley until she towered over him right where he sat defeatedly on the floor.  
“Samantha Hansen, get out of my house,” she said in a low and raspy voice. Every word in the sentence was slow and punctuated with a pause. She hardly opened her mouth to speak and her deadly blue eyes were still trained on Charley even while she addressed Sam. “Don’t you dare ever come back here again.” Her voice was just above a whisper, but it carried in it the same rage as a scream.  
Sam’s shoes squeaking against the floor and her sobs were the only sounds Charley heard as she rushed out of the attic and almost fell down the stairs. The front door slammed from the main floor. Sam was gone. He was alone up there with his mother.  
Neither of them said anything for what felt like several small forevers. Charley didn’t breathe, he didn’t blink, and he didn’t move a muscle. He just stared, wide-eyed, at the terrifyingly emotionless face standing over him. Normally his mother would scream and spit at him. She would raise her voice and threaten to give him hell. He wished for that now. Having her eyes burn silently into the depths of his mind was a million times worse.  
“Get up,” she said finally.  
The tone of her voice was impossible to read. Charley obeyed and stood. His legs were trembling, and he couldn’t look into her eyes now that he was so close up to her. Staring down at his feet was all he could muster.  
“Look at me. Right now.” Her voice, while keeping the same quiet volume, got more intense with every word she spoke. Charley finally forced his guilty gaze up at her and let out a shaky exhale. Her eyes looked like the blue fire at the tip of a flame.  
“I have always been tellin’ you to stay out of this damn attic. Have I not?”  
He opened his mouth to answer, but he wasn’t even sure what he was saying. Words tumbled out of his mouth with a mind of their own—she didn’t understand; he had his good reasons, honest to God; it was all Sam’s idea and not his. Tears welled up in his eyes again and his voice cracked out to a whisper then to nothing as he noticed that his mother’s stare wasn’t softening at all. There were so many questions he wanted to ask about what he’d just learned and so many vile names he wanted to call her, but nothing came. He stood there and tried to fight how hard his bottom lip quivered.  
His mother grabbed his chin and pulled his face up close her. Her long nails dug into his cheeks almost hard enough to break the skin.  
“I said,” she repeated through gritted teeth, disregarding everything he’d just said in his defense, “did I not tell you to stay out of this damn attic?”  
The only response he could give was a futile attempt at a nod through her grip squishing his face. She removed her hand, seeming pleased enough with his response, and narrowed her eyes at him with a thick inhale.  
He waited for her to say something else. He wanted her to break the tension, to lash out and shout at him, so he could at least feel something other than the weight of what all he’d just learned and the heat of her glare.  
“You idiot boy, Charley.”  
It was all she said. Not shouted. But whispered so quietly he almost didn’t hear it. Just one sentence, but weight of it sank under his skin and into his lungs.  
She’d called him that before, but this time felt different from any other.  
Her words felt truer than even the word of God this time. He wanted nothing more than to shrink up into a little ball of guilt and nothing in front of her, but all he could do was watch his tears drip little dark spots onto the floor below him.  
She slapped him across the face then. And it hardly came as a surprise to Charley, though the impact was still enough to make him tumble backwards to the ground again. The only thought in his mind was how stupid he must have looked to her right then as he fell.  
The look on his mother’s face as she watched him on the ground there, a red mark from her hand developing on his cheek, was almost a sneer.  
There wasn’t another word between them. She walked away just how she’d come in, slamming the attic door behind her, leaving Charley alone to sit in a pile of old letters written by his father.  
***  
Two days later, the police found Jonathon Chapman’s body in the river. Apparently some of Jonathon’s friends had finally come forward and said they’d been drinking in the woods and joking around before he fell in the water and they couldn’t get him back out.  
Some kids from school had snuck to look at the scene while the cops were there and bragged afterwards about how the body was all bloated and rotten when it got pulled out of the water. Charley didn’t really care to hear about it.  
Almost everything went back to normal in time once that happened. Jonathon was accounted for. Everyone seemed to want to forget the rumors about Charley’s mother even happened, and some folks even apologized to him for their taking part in it.  
People moved on. Just one thing alone was different now.  
Once it was all said and done, only one person believed in the Shepherdsville Witch and her wickedness.  
It was Charley himself.


End file.
